I shall again be running the bar – the Whistleblower’s Arms - at the Doune the Rabbit Hole Festival from 22 to 24 August at Cardross, Port of Menteith.

I find this festival, which is very much a lifestyle event and features mostly new talent, an extremely life-affirming experience. Last year it brought me back from a very dark place. Some of this blogs most active commenters and helpers have been among the volunteers over the last couple of years, keeping the event going. Personally for me the festival is necessarily centred around Williams Bros and Thistly Cross, but there is a tremendous variety of music:

The event is very family friendly, and also an amazing place to meet new friends. It does not have any specific political orientation, but I might fairly say that the vibe is very much in line with the kind of unconstrained intellectual space promoted on this blog. On top of which Cardross is an extraordinarily beautiful place. The variety of local food on site, ranging from vegan to game, is one of the things I really enjoyed. It is a not for profit event and nobody gets a salary.

Tickets are not expensive by festival standards, and certainly cheaper than a weekend break in a hotel. But there is also the alternative of working your passage – the festival still needs plenty of volunteers.

I am genuinely looking forward to it enormously. Hope to see you there.

450 Comments

Please explain why you think these three things.”
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Oh, having been inspired by the splendid example offered by sundry Excellences on this blog over the years, I just thought it would be interesting to experience what it feels like to sling a little mud around at a public figure.

And I must admit it felt quite pleasant and I’m beginning to understand why the Eminences do it all the time.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee are mirror images of one another, reintroducing the theme of inversion. With the exception of their names, the two little fat men are identical in looks, manner, and stance. They exhibit perfect symmetry, standing together with their arms around each other, so that when they extend their free hands they each reflect the other’s body position. Their conversation also displays a symmetrical position designated by Tweedledee’s favorite expression, “contrariwise.” “Contrariwise” functions as a transitional word that flips the premise of the conversation. Tweedledee usually addresses the other side of whatever Tweedledum just said.

Sounds just like one of those Air Sea Rescue helicopters that Prince Will I Am has been flying doesn’t it?

He has landed a P/T job (hence depriving another of the job) as an Air Ambulance pilot. Such caring people our royals. They would never think of becoming arms salesmen or piloting a helicopter gunship in Afghanistan to hunt down the people and kill them.

““I was a very conservative, Reagan-loving Republican,” said one of the targets, Faisal Gill. “If somebody like me could be surveilled, then [there are] other people out there I can only imagine who are under surveillance.”

“I went to school here as a fourth grader – learned about the Revolutionary War, learned about individual rights, Thomas Jefferson, all these things,” he told The Intercept. “That is ingrained in you – your privacy is important. And to have that basically invaded for no reason whatsoever – for the fact that I didn’t do anything – I think that’s troubling. And I think that certainly goes to show how we need to shape policy differently than it is right now.”

CAIR’s Nihad Awad used stronger language to describe his feelings about being targeted and spoke specifically about how the Muslim community has been treated in the U.S. in recent years.

“I’m outraged as an American citizen that my government, after decades of civil rights struggle, still spies on political activists and civil right activists and leaders,” he said. “I’m really angry that despite all the work that we have been doing in our communities to serve the nation, we are treated with suspicion.”

I have been listening to this speech Gerry Conlon (one of the Guildford Four) made in November last year. It was on the same site.

It is the most passionate and moving speech I have ever heard. It moved me to tears. He speaks without notes and has amazing recall for the facts and the names. Michael Havers’ name comes up incidentally.

He died earlier this year sadly. His body was broken but his spirit was not

RIP Gerry Conlon. We are very sorry for what was done to you and are ashamed. You will not be forgotten for your search for truth and justice. The latter was denied to you of course. Quite wicked.

“Official documents recording flights in and out of Diego Garcia, the British Indian Ocean Territory where the United States is accused of carrying out ‘extraordinary rendition’ of terror suspects, have been destroyed by water damage.”

The mass killing war criminals that call themselves the Israeli Government are as predictable as they are obscene, expect the most intensive phase of the current killing spree to be during the weekend, as the World’s attention will be diverted by the climax of the World Cup, just like the World’s attention was diverted at the start of Cast Lead by the inauguration of Obama.

Brian Haw was a great man, like a modern Stylite; he had guts, integrity, passion, moral purity and humanity. I’m grateful to him for the stand that he took, and for so visibly articulating our moral outrage right under the noses of the warmongers. RIP matey.

“In the approximately nine hours since this post was originally published, the casualty count in Gaza has reached forty Palestinians killed since Tuesday morning. Al-Akhbar English has published a list provided by the health ministry in Gaza with the names of the victims.

“Among those killed, thirteen were aged sixteen or younger. The youngest victim, eighteen-month-old Mohammed Malakiyeh, was killed along with his 27-year-old mother. The oldest victim, eighty-year-old Naifeh Farjallah, was killed in an air strike on the town of Moghraqa, southwest of Gaza City,” Al-Akhbar reports.”

I distinctly remember the World’s attention being focus on something happening in the US iro Obama, and many people remarked at the time how this wasn’t the first time the Israelis had lunched a mass murder spree while the something major was just occurring elsewhere.

“None of them are of interest nor contain anything useful to the community here.”
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The first part of the above is merely your opinion (although perhaps shared by some of your fellow Eminences) and as for the second part, I feel that occasionally questioning and highlighting foolishness is, actually, quite useful (althiugh an arduous undertaking given the people who post here).

Medical question to you : is it your opinion that all commenters who post a lot are incontinent? What does your GP say?

You are piece of shit habbakuk. Brian Haw had more stature in his little finger than you creep could ever wish for or achieve.

Bad mouthing principled people will not get you anywhere chum. Gald to see all your posts here, you must be eager to swing your sorry arse to the DTRH fair.
Just show yourselfs up and you’ll get an extra treat for being a coward and a shit.

Perhaps I was abstracted Macky. There were so many demos, marches and protests at the time and someone I know was caught up in it but thankfully got home alive unlike the 1,400 Palestinians who were killed.

Can you imagine if roles were reversed and the Palestinians killed that number of Israelis?

The conflict resulted in between 1,166 and 1,417 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths (4 from friendly fire)

“Of course not. And he didn’t offer to meet me in London. That was Villager.”

Invitation happily renewed. It would be a pleasure to have a coffee and conversation with one of the more graceful commenters here.

Not being judgmental about my other fellow humans here. There is always the capacity of a meeting ground with another, provided they are not drunk on power or alcohol. Sadly of for the most part what we see is more conflict and divisiveness. This is a fact of the present state of human consciousness and as the trend of CM’s posts show, it is set to get worse before, if at all, they get better.

Life is beautiful but insecurity and violence, in all its forms, is everywhere.

So:

” This beauty walks on hard nails
Sanity walks on a razor’s edge
But its truth alone that matters
Sitting pretty on this lethal ledge”

@Mary, I think you might have been distracted when you wrote you were abstracted when you were in fact distracted !

I jest, but with the mass murder going on in Gaza right now, I feel very disconsolate; in fact I’m in no mood to tolerate the resident vile apologists for the Israeli mass murderers, they make me feel unclean to even address them, so time for another time-out for me.

You Mary, fortunately are made of sterner stuff, and you are the one that word “tenacious” applies to best

“I feel very disconsolate; in fact I’m in no mood to tolerate the resident vile apologists for the Israeli mass murderers, they make me feel unclean to even address them, so time for another time-out for me.”

I missed your posts and I’m sad it seems I’m going to miss them again.

Of course anyone who comes across Dad’s droppings soon feels unclean. The man swims around in a sewage lagoon of his own making. He only hoses these comment strands with filth because all too often they expose the indefensible obscenities perpetrated by his masters. I regard his insults as an indication that the conversation is on the right track.

I’d love you to consider taking a Habbabreak so you can continue adding to insightful conversations that fluorish here despite the wreckers.

Who wrote the odd ode? Krishnamurti? It’s like a bad dream revisited seeing the name of that poster crop up. Been lurking obviously.

‘ The news regarding Krishnamurti and the World Teacher were not universally welcome by Theosophists and led to upheavals in the Society; Lutyens (1983a), pp. 15–19, 40, 56. Part of the controversy was Leadbeater’s role. He had a history of being in the company of young boys–pupils under his spiritual and Theosophical instruction–and there was gossip concerning child abuse, although no accusations were ever proven.’http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti

How did the current Vicount Verulam (and the 5 before him) end up with a title originally that of Sir Francis Bacon?

When you have paid sufficient money and compliments to the party in power, you are asked what you want to be called after your visit to Buckingham Palace. Your new style refers, preferably, to a place you are associated with or have some particular interest in. For instance, if Tony ever becomes eligible for a peerage – which will involve a lot more financial transparency on his part – he might style himself Lord Blair of Tel Aviv.

The Earldom of Verulam incorporates the title Viscount Grimston and technically there is no such thing as the Viscount Verulam per se.

On the contrary, dear boy – in the vast majority if cases I see it as evidence that Eminences and Useful Idiots are lost for an answer or are unwilling to admit that they have posted nonsense, distortions or untruths.

Furthermore, the important point is that uncommitted visitors (as opposed to the twenty or so diehard “commenters”) see what I have to say; if they also notice the absence of replies or reactions, well, that’s a bonus as far as I’m concerned. Sorry!

“He only hoses these comment strands with filth because all too often they expose the indefensible obscenities perpetrated by his masters.”
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Well, the threads, don’t really “expose” very much, given that most comments are mere cut-and-pastes from other blogs and sources, including the MSM, and most of the rest expose no more than the commenters’ own pychological dis-ease (to be kind).

Well I suppose that I qualify as a “Visitor” if not exactly an uncommitted one. As to what you have to say-it is largely mainstream conventionalist bollox mixed with Ad Hominem. To be kind,I guess it impresses casual visitors as little as it has impressed me. Sorry!

My posts obviously constitute a threat to the troll. Too strong for him to counter and because of my support for the Palestinians, the reason why I have been targeted and insulted by him for nearly three years, come November.

It is evident that there is so little love in the hearts of the trolls.

If this blog survives to be read by the next generation, whatever will they think of the posts of Habbakuk and the others trolls here. The trolls should think on and moderate their outpourings of hate, lies and distortions.

I don’t need truncheons or any implements to floor your sorry arse, you poor little academic.
As for calling me by my name, which is very much known anyway, good on you to recognise what you are dealing with, scum, I have nothing to hide unlike you, appearing here under some bumsucking moniker spreading your bile and narrow minded ideas in support of the zionist Nazi’s that have diverted Britains foreing policy.

You could be a traitor, but you ain’t got class, a pennyfogger and purile ccyberstalker. At least the Cambridge lot were drinking alcoholics, but you?…….